Glendoick Mail Order 2017-18

Glendoick Gardens grow a range of the bestselling rhododendron and azalea species and hybrids and other woodland and acid-loving plants. For the reasons outlined below, we have reduced the size of our mail order nursery and will be growing a smaller range of material going forward. 2017-18 will be the last chance to obtain some of these plants.

Orders for Collection from our award-winning garden centre. You can pre-order/reserve plants for collection. Please allow at least 1 week for us to assemble orders for collection on a specific date. Which can be at any time of year. The garden centre is open 7 days a week. E mail gardencentre@glendoick.com with your requirements.

Mail order is now only available for larger orders: £500+ ex vat. We can deliver plants to societies/groups who wish to club together to place orders, invoiced to and delivered to one address.

Postage and packing is extra.

How to order Our webshop is for information only. To place an order, please download our excel order form and stocklist and fill in your order. You will find 6 tabs on it. 1 Customer details, 2. Main stock list, 3 & 4. Special offers for collections of 40+ plants, 5 Specimen plants (for collection only) and 6. Abbreviations, details on hardiness etc.

Our Online webshop gives information on the varieties we propagate with photographs of most of them. At the moment you cant order from it, only from our excel sheets.

Please download the excel sheet to your computer and save it, preferably with your name in the file name. Fill in the order in the grey column. Totals should appear automatically at the bottom.

If you find the excel sheets difficult, just send us an e mail with your full details and your order and we can input the details.

Why is Glendoick scaling back its Mail Order?

1. Economics. Brexit, economic downturn, bureaucracy, and plant selling prices are not keeping pace with increases in minimum wages and have therefore made specialist nurseries uneconomic. M&S, for example, are selling large rhododendron hybrids for £10. We can’t compete. I fear that specialist rhododendron growers will be a rare breed when current nursery owners retire.

2. Climate Change and Pest and Disease threatsAll gardeners are suffering from the effects of climate change, particularly in S. E. England. The last time I visited the Valley Gardens at Windsor, I could see what the future of rhododendrons in this part of the world might be. We have had no rain for months and have been watering day and night to keep things goings. Meanwhile, the number of pests and diseases increases year on year: soft scale, petal blight, ash die back and sudden oak death. And the chemicals used to control them are disappearing off the market, so we have nothing to turn to. Systhane, the best mildew control, has just gone off the market. Glyphosate (Roundup) looks like it may join the others on the list. The E.C. is sleepwalking to disaster, allowing plant imports of plants with soil from Asia, New Zealand and other countries. The latest pest to come from New Zealand is a mealy bug which eats Meconopsis roots.

3. Phytophthora ramorumThis disease is now established all over the UK, and much of Europe. It has spread around Larix (larch) plantations in the UK and is clearly an airborne disease as well as a waterborne one. This means that, like Ash die back, it cannot be controlled by hygiene. In common with most UK woodland gardens and nurseries, Glendoick has had small outbreaks of this disease and have satisfied the criteria which the plant health authorities demand. This has allowed us to continue to trade. But this disease is here to stay in Europe. At present, all infected plants are destroyed without compensation. We don’t want to be forced to close the nursery in the future, so are taking steps to protect ourselves from this eventuality. Having taken advice, we are discontinuing open ground production and moving to container only, and are eradicating all susceptible varieties from commercial production.

3. Plant HuntingThe Nagoya Protocols, which bans plant collecting worldwide, have made plant-hunting for a nursery like ours more or less impossible. While we quite understand the reasons for this legislation, and broadly support it, the effect is likely to be counter-productive in terms of conservation, as threatened plants may become extinct, if they cannot be collected and distributed. We were lucky to have three generations of Cox plant-hunters.

Thank you for your support of Glendoick over the years. We hope that you will continue to visit Glendoick. We will continue to stock the largest range of rhododendrons available in any UK garden centre and we are continuing to develop new hybrids.

We have just named 2 new evergreen azaleas Glendoick Candyfloss and Glendoick Ruffles and have selected a new double yellow azalea for testing. (see images below)

Kenneth Cox's book Woodland Gardening will be published in May 2018

With 400 pages and 600 photographs of woodland gardens and plants from round the world.